Subscriber numbers have more than doubled in the past 15 months to 2.2 million now.Although the company made a pre-tax loss of pounds 228m in 1997-98 and will be loss-making this year, it expects to break even in 2000.James Ross of the brokers ABNAmro, reckons One2One will overtake Orange in terms of market share before the end of this year and be making pre- tax profits of pounds 650m by 2002. He values the company at pounds 11bn.One2One certainly has its growing band of admirers. By 2004, six in ten homes are forecast to have a mobile phone.One2One's investment in the network - pounds 1.2bn so far with another pounds 600m to come taking its UK coverage up to 98 per cent - has also paid off. There are now some 12 million subscribers - representing a penetration rate of 20 per cent - but that is generally expected to double in the next 12 to 18 months. Stories abound about how some subscribers began using their One2One phones as baby alarms and how One2One now regularly attempts to buy subscribers out of these contracts by offering them thousands of pounds.One2One says both stories are apocryphal but admits it did have problems in the early days with the network becoming clogged, particularly around some London tower blocks.But its faith in the mass appeal of the mobile phone has paid off.

It was also handicapped by the decision to restrict service to the London area.One2One is still living with the costly legacy of its PersonalCall tariff which offered subscribers unlimited free off-peak calls at weekends and evenings. We are not going to change our strategy one iota."That strategy, engraved on the company since it began operations in September 1993, has been to transform the mobile phone from a business tool into something with genuine mass-market appeal.Its early efforts at undercutting the opposition - Cellnet and Vodafone - on price and targeting the consumer market were a disaster. "From my perspective, the support they give One2One is more important than where they come from. But at the end of the day I can't influence how C&W or MediaOne chose to manage their shareholders and they have an obligation to maximise shareholder value."Nor did he stress a preference for a US or European owner, should One2One be sold to a trade buyer. But Tim Samples, the American managing director of One2One, refused to be drawn yesterday."I think we will have some say in the decision and we have spent a great deal of time with the banks acting for the two shareholders helping draw up the memorandum for sale.

But analysts believe a flotation remains the more likely option.That would almost certainly be the preference of the One2One management, given the freedom that a stock market listing would bring. The sale, due to be launched before the end of this year, is likely to value One2One at anywhere between pounds 8bn and pounds 11bn, even though it is yet to make its first pre-tax profit and is the smallest of the UK's four cellular operators by some margin. The decision to dispose of One2One follows the appointment of Graham Wallace as the new chief executive of Cable & Wireless and the takeover of MediaOne by the rival US cable group Comcast in a $60bn (pounds 37bn) stock deal.Several telecoms groups, including Deutsche Telekom and Mannessmann Telekom of Germany, France Telecom and Bell Atlantic and SBC Communications of the US, are already being mooted as potential suitors. ONE2ONE, Britain's fourth biggest mobile-phone operator, is to be floated on the stock market or sold to another company, its joint owners, Cable & Wireless and MediaOne of the United States, confirmed yesterday. The Yetagun project in Myanmar should come on stream in April next year and sales of 2.5 trillion cubic feet of gas from the offshore West Natuna gas field to Singapore are due to start from mid-2001.Premier has also signed an agreement to combine exploration and production assets in Pakistan with Shell.There is no dividend, and the shares, which traded at 51p last year, fell 1p to 15p.. Mr Jamieson played down pleas from the Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the World Development Movement to stop co-operating with the military regime in Myanmar.

Far from pulling out, Premier has committed itself further in Asia. The write-off was caused by the requirements of accounting standard FRS11, which forces companies such as Premier to disaggregate their assets in different operating areas and prevents them offsetting gains against losses. It left the group nursing a loss of pounds 137.2m against a profit of pounds 48.5m in 1997, but banking covenants are unaffected.The board also rejected claims by rebel shareholders led by Dr Peter Felter, a partner in a City law firm, that Asia is too difficult for a small oil independent and it should exit the region, which generated 40 per cent of profits in 1997. PREMIER OIL chief executive, Charles Jamieson, yesterday shrugged off both the impact of a pounds 143m write-off and the attacks of a pressure group demanding that the group pull out of Asia. There is also the possibility an outsider will barge in with a bid Arlen is capitalised at pounds 12.7m The shares are 19p; they were 34p last summer..